BINGO (BAO from Integrated Neutral Gas Observations) is a unique radio telescope designed to map the intensity of neutral hydrogen distribution at cosmological distances, making the first detection of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in the frequency band 980 MHz - 1260 MHz, corresponding to a redshift range 0.127 < z < 0.449. BAO is one of the most powerful probes of cosmological parameters and BINGO was designed to detect the BAO signal to a level that makes it possible to put new constraints on the equation of state of dark energy. The telescope will be built in Paraíba, Brazil and consists of two \thicksim 40m mirrors, a feedhorn array of 50 horns, and no moving parts, working as a drift-scan instrument. It will cover a 15 ^{\circ} ∘ declination strip centered at \sim \delta ⼠δ =-15 ^{\circ} ∘ , mapping \sim â¼ 5400 square degrees in the sky. The BINGO consortium is led by University of São Paulo with co-leadership at National Institute for Space Research and Campina Grande Federal University (Brazil). Telescope subsystems have already been fabricated and tested, and the dish and structure fabrication are expected to start in late 2020, as well as the road and terrain preparation.
We discuss whether massive neutrinos (either active or sterile) can reconcile some of the tensions within cosmological data that have been brought into focus by the recently released Planck data. We point out that a discrepancy is present when comparing the primary CMB and lensing measurements both from the CMB and galaxy lensing data using CFHTLenS, similar to that which arises when comparing CMB measurements and SZ cluster counts. A consistent picture emerges and including a prior for the cluster constraints and BAOs we find that for an active neutrino model with three degenerate neutrinos, ∑m(ν)=(0.320±0.081) eV, whereas for a sterile neutrino, in addition to 3 neutrinos with a standard hierarchy and ∑m(ν)=0.06 eV, m(ν,sterile)(eff)=(0.450±0.124) eV and ΔN(eff)=0.45±0.23. In both cases there is a significant detection of modification to the neutrino sector from the standard model and in the case of the sterile neutrino it is possible to reconcile the BAO and local H0 measurements. However, a caveat to our result is some internal tension between the CMB and lensing and cluster observations, and the masses are in excess of those estimated from the shape of the matter power spectrum from galaxy surveys.
We discuss the linearized, gravitational self-interaction of a brane of arbitrary codimension in a spacetime of arbitrary dimension. We find that in the codimension two case the gravitational self-force is exactly zero for a Nambu-Goto equation of state, generalizing a previous result for a string in four dimensions. For the case of a 3-brane, this picks out the case of a six-dimensional brane-world model as having special properties that we discuss. In particular, we see that bare tension on the brane has no effect locally, suppressing the cosmological constant problem.
We discuss the prospects of constraining the properties of a dark energy component, with particular reference to a time varying equation of state, using future cluster surveys selected by their Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. We compute the number of clusters expected for a given set of cosmological parameters and propogate the errors expected from a variety of surveys. In the short term they will constrain dark energy in conjunction with future observations of type Ia supernovae, but may in time do so in their own right.
We show that stable Skyrmions exist in two-component atomic Bose-Einstein condensates, in the regime of phase separation. Using full three-dimensional simulations we find the stable Skyrmions with topological charges Q = 1 and 2, and compute their properties. With reference to these computations we suggest the salient features of an experimental setup in which they might realized.
